


have a little faith

by sanriojess



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse, American Horror Story: Coven
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Developing Relationship, Eventual Romance, F/M, Falling In Love, Forbidden Love, Heavy Angst, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Outpost Michael, Protective Michael, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24795844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanriojess/pseuds/sanriojess
Summary: michael langdon has no place in this life. you don’t even remember the hurt he caused the world, the hurt he caused you all.yet when he offers you your mother’s safety in return for you, it’s hard to say no.
Relationships: Michael Langdon & Reader, Michael Langdon & You, Michael Langdon/Original Female Character(s), Michael Langdon/Reader, Michael Langdon/You
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	have a little faith

The dreams that visit you nightly are less than friendly. 

Some might have been almost pleasant if you had not focused on more than just the simple backdrop. The lilac sheets of your childhood bedroom and the soft sounds of music from the living room are almost comforting and draped in nostalgia, and you feel for a moment as if you are in the past, clueless and innocent as the little girl you once were. 

But no. If this was a memory, you would be alone. 

You try not to pay attention to the shadows that linger just outside the gap of your door, or the slight illusion of snakes that curl around your arms, your legs, your entire body—they don’t bite, but rather cling to you, leaning in to your warmth just as much as your fear. 

The door opens, just a crack, and you see someone. Someone with a face you can’t quite picture, even though it’s right in front of you—all you feel is both the immense power, and the sadness that exudes from him. You feel as if you know him, even as his features are of no human being you know. As if you know his smile, even as he looks on at you in indifference, even in a sick sort of curiosity, taking you in as if he knew you in the same way. 

Before you can try and think anything but a panicked thought, or even focus on the stranger that watches you, the creatures curled around your body start to hiss, coiling tighter and tighter until it feels like there’s no more and for you to breathe. When you try to find him again, all you can see is the red and the black and the darkness that paints every corner of your room—or maybe that was what he had personified all along. 

The snakes stop, yet you cannot move. Desperation to wake up ceases you—yet, when you close your eyes, thinking of home and reality, there is another touch on your skin; softer, yet harsher in the way it claims you, running along your arms, your cheek, your neck. The hand rests on your chest, on the beating rhythm of your heart, and it is hard to do anything but fall into the feeling, one of chaos and calm and nothing else at all. 

When the screaming starts, you feel, for the first time, wide awake. 

* * *

“This can’t be right.” 

All you can do is voice your disbelief as Cordelia Goode—your mother—tries to bring her weight up from the floor, stumbling and falling before she’s caught again. You’re not the only one who’s caught onto the scene, but it seems as if you’re the only one with little help to offer, useless and powerless against the situation. 

Her eyes fail to return your gaze, even as you take her hand and try to squeeze it as reassuringly as you can manage. Absentmindedly, you squeeze your eyes shut to try and cage the tears that threaten to spill down your cheeks—why should  _ you  _ cry? A show of weakness was the last thing anybody needed, especially due to something they had always expected to happen. 

“Oh, my darling Cordelia. I’m afraid your powers are waning.” 

Myrtle's words were reminiscent of a time three years ago. Mallory had been a powerful witch, and inevitably, she had risen up in the ranks at Miss Robichaux’s Academy; the current Supreme ever so slowly starting to fade away. It had been a revelation that Cordelia had even welcomed, making sure to offer her support to the girl—but it had ended as quickly as it had begun. Merely two months after she had completed the Seven Wonders, she had died in her sleep, leaving no viable candidate to take over the role of the Supremacy. 

Secretly, you had been almost glad that you wouldn’t lose your last remaining parent. The loss of a witch you were barely close to could have never amounted to losing one of the only people you had left. 

It seemed as if your wishful and frankly selfish thinking had beckoned karma. 

“So who is the next Supreme?” 

Zoe asks with a sense of wonder, and you remember she had been the one to suspect Mallory as the initial candidate. When they had found her body, she had excused herself, and you had hoped she felt, in some way, the sort of relief you had—it helped on the nights you wondered if you were sick in the head for celebrating the death of someone else. 

You supposed you were lucky for blending into the background. Inheriting Cordelia’s magic, you were an unsaid disappointment to the high expectations everyone had of you—the gift given to you of communicating to useful souls was weak and barely even existent, making your only defining attribute being someone’s daughter. 

And now? Your silence on the topic of your powers had been something you didn’t think could hurt anyone; even as they slowly started to grow, beyond anything you could have imagined when you had first become aware of them. Obviously, you had been wrong. 

As your mother muttered that she didn’t know, her eyes finally latched on to you, amidst all the chaos and the sudden bursts of theories that came from the students. 

The white walls of the Academy were all you could focus on, even more so as you felt her hand leave your own. With Myrtle recommending bed rest and the more traditional peace and quiet, it seemed as if there was nowhere to escape the topic of whoever was the new Supreme—for those that were older, the inevitable death of Cordelia. No one asked you your opinion on the matter, nor did they even acknowledge you. 

It was easy enough to slip away, heading to your own bedroom in spite of the soft sobbing you heard from your original destination. You could hear muffled voices from downstairs, the chaos and disruption still hard to contain—eventually, your mother's sobbing stopped, making way for silence. 

She  _ knew.  _ It was all you could think. What sort of pain would you feel, knowing that your own daughter was the cause of your death? Fiona Goode has felt it once, and she was stuck in an eternity of suffering—but what would await her successor? 

Your mother was a good woman. You weren’t quite good enough. 

All you had was questions—but you needed answers. You weren’t quite sure if you would sit prettily as your only family faded away quietly, offering your hand for holding and your arms for hugs until there was nothing left of her but you. Surely, if you really were the future Supreme, there was power? Power nobody had trained you to use, of course, and you had never expected to receive, but it was there nonetheless. 

And your gift. Somewhere, you were sure, there was a soul that could be useful enough to stop fate itself. After all, hadn’t Misty Day, after being trapped in purgatory with no apparent escape, turned up on their front door? She had been the living example that the impossible really was possible, even without a reasonable explanation. 

A knock at your door brought you out of your thoughts, and you turned to face Myrtle Snow—her face a dark cloud. You tried to hazard a smile, but it felt unnatural on your lips, and so you simply directed your gaze to the window—trying hard to focus on the flowers and the sun and the greenery, distracting your mind if only for a second. 

“Your mother...it’s hard, I know, but it’s a  _ good-” _

“A good thing?” 

Wheeling to face her, it was clear from the anger laced in your voice that you were not there to listen. If, perhaps, it was another day, she would have reprimanded you...yet grief was a funny thing, and even she knew not to overstep her boundaries when someone was feeling it. 

Looking at the candles that had lit themselves suddenly without any explanation, she gently sat at the foot of your bed, red hair the only flash of colour in the room. Her hesitation to speak was something you had never quite expected from her, who always had something to chip in at inopportune moments. 

When you wrestled your gaze away from the windows, the tears that you had held in finally rested on your cheeks, shining against the sunlight that spilled through the room and the flames that you had conjured. 

You were sure that, as your mother's closest confidante, she too knew of your improved powers, but if she did, she said nothing. 

“I can’t lose her.” 

The words were nothing more than a hoarse whisper, but they were loud and clear. For as long as you could manage, and in whatever way you could find, you would keep Cordelia alive, even if it meant losing everything else. 

“Darling, you already have.” 

_ A lie.  _

Resting your head down to look at the floor, the other picked up the message that you simply didn’t want her there; leaving you to your solitude yet again. 

As much as you convinced yourself you wanted to be alone—as much as you repeated it like a mantra ad inside your head—you simply craved more than your own warmth and your own reassurance. The Coven had always been relatively welcoming, but you had never quite felt as if you were a Witch, even if it ran through your own blood. You had always tried to be perfectly content in your own company, and in your own failure. 

It was much better than this mockery of a victory, this success that was nothing more than a betrayal given to you by the world. Magic and the Supremacy, respect even, meant nothing, nothing at all, if it came with  _ this.  _

You didn’t have the stomach to face your mother. In the darkness of your room, all you could guess was the expression on the face when finally talked again—would it be betrayal? Sadness? Or would she rise above her emotions, and, yet again, put on a brave face for everybody else? 

The thoughts should have kept you up, even as night fell, but they lulled you into sleep, disregarding your barely formed plans to fix everything. 

Achingly familiar was the backdrop that greeted you when you opened your eyes again. 

* * *

How many times had you been stuck in this dream? Accompanied with the usual childish hope that it would, for once, be peaceful, you had always been disappointed, plagued with faces that you couldn’t remember and visions that couldn’t be explained, much less enjoyed. 

You never fully remembered until you were plunged back in, and even then, you couldn’t gain any more clarity on what you saw. Whether it was some twisted purgatory you had been invited to in your unconsciousness, or merely your brain’s attempt at a nightmare, you had quite simply grown tired of the nightly event. 

Focusing on the wall next to you, trying to will yourself back to the land of the living, was unsuccessful. As much as you wanted to explore your surroundings, there was still that jolt of unease, the fear that clenched every muscle of your body—you could kid yourself, but you couldn’t possibly enjoy whatever this was. 

The soft, barely present sound of movement behind you made you tense, clutching the bedsheets beneath you in the hope they would grant you safety—just as you had as a child, when you had been greeted similarly by spectres and spirits who had chosen to terrorise you, who was much more susceptible to torture than the Supreme. 

When it merely grew louder, your curiosity was undeniable—you turned around.

Where the seat you had once sat on, a lifetime ago, to draw with crayons and pencils, was  _ that  _ man. The face you had never been able to pinpoint or see— _ really  _ see, against the darkness and the looming fear, the only real thing amidst the illusions. 

You could see him now, that was clear. 

If you weren’t in a haze, you would have wanted to take him in—to breathe in his every feature, study him as if he was not a human being but a statue, a piece of renaissance art that had been brought in for show. 

God, maybe he wasn’t a human. It wouldn’t be a surprise in your world or witches and warlocks, much less as you absentmindedly looked him over. 

He still watched you, but this time with a lazy, feline glare, one hand perched underneath his chin to frame it perfectly; underneath it all, you could sense that he was just as confused as you were, the indifference from before gone. Perhaps  _ he  _ could mask it, but you could not, the evidence in the strangled gasp that you breathed out. 

“Get out of my fucking room!” 

The contrast between you and this perfect stranger was infuriating; even more so as he cocked his head, his all-knowing smirk short of the answer you wanted. If you weren’t frozen in the position you had turned to—and you were sure it wasn’t just fear, that  _ he  _ had somehow managed to keep you perfectly still —you would have tried to run or to hide even further, away from this stranger that simply watched and listened. 

Drinking you in, he paused, eyes wandering until they fixed again on you. 

“How did you bring me here?” 

If you couldn’t sense the slight anger that emanated from him, you would have felt at ease with the feather-light way he spoke, gentle as if you were the child that had once slept in this very bed. From only six words, you could hazard a small guess at what type of man you could be dealing with—he was obviously calculative. 

He could have done anything to you, but instead, he simply asked you what he needed. 

“This is a dream. I’m guessing you’re just here as a mindfuck.” 

The shake of his head was all the confirmation you were going to get—that he was real, though you had never doubted it in the first place. You had read once that faces could only be replicated within dreams, and you had never seen him before in your life, apart from inside  _ this  _ place. 

With his silence and your own hesitation, it spared you a moment to take him in. 

He was, undoubtedly, the sort of guy you would have stopped to look at in the street. Out of a sea of ordinary, normal people, it seemed you and the Coven had always been the outsiders—but he was something else entirely. In entirely different circumstances, you would have given anything to figure him out, to crack the shell he wore like a coat of armour. 

But  _ was it  _ a shell? Not only would you have stopped to look at him in the street, but you would have probably picked up your pace in the opposite direction once you had. 

_ What’s your name?  _

It only took a moment for you to realise he hadn’t spoken the words, at least not directly.

“Y/N Goode.”

“ _ Goode.”  _

Your name in his mouth sounded both like a melody and a poison. You didn’t know which was worse.

The fear had made way for you to ponder the odd nature of the situation—how ridiculous it was, this stranger in your childhood bedroom, stuck inside your dreaming head. He even looked halfway ridiculous, as if he had sprung out of some 1700s novel. 

_ Now I can ask a question?  _

It was strange, but you felt, without any conscious acknowledgement, his approval of your thought. The question that first came to mind was easy. 

“Who are you?” 

Your guess had been that of a warlock or a spirit, but it was hard to singularly pinpoint anything to him. He could have been anyone, there for anything—and yet there you were, approaching the situation with what seemed like harmless small talk. 

Well, it wasn’t as if you had much of a choice. 

“I don’t think you want a truthful answer.” 

He spoke definitively, as if he was the sole expert on what  _ you  _ wanted. Your narrowing glare on him, trembling with heat, made him sigh—you had hoped a glimmer of understanding could come between you, that, mutually, you could be able to figure it out. 

“My name is Michael Langdon.” 

The name didn’t ring a bell, but you felt a jolt of familiarity anyway. He murmured it with almost loathing, and you wondered, along the way, how this prideful man had lost the pride for his own  _ name.  _

“I’m not a warlock. I..don’t know, exactly, what I am anymore.” 

For the first time, you really could see he was telling the truth. He wasn’t there for any more of a logical reason than you were, though you, perhaps, had a possible explanation. 

As much as you had tried to deny the development of your powers, they had displayed themselves in very obvious ways through the past months—and, in times of hardship, you had found yourself communing with every type of soul imaginable, depending on the advice you needed. They could have been dead, alive, or anything else, and every time, you had managed to find them in front of you. 

At first, you thought it useless, but there were obviously some positives to the negatives. 

“You’re here for a reason. You must be, otherwise you wouldn’t be here sitting with me.” 

Foolishly, you hoped he was the answer to your prayers for your mother’s health, for the wheels of time to stop. It wasn’t completely hard to believe—you  _ knew  _ he wasn’t human, could see it now, quite clearly. He knew it too, and that was, perhaps, why he was withholding the truth. 

“And you, the daughter of the Supreme, can’t figure it out?” 

He sounded almost unkind in the way he drawled the words, and, again, you felt whatever was lurking beneath the surface of his mask. Michael didn’t seem like the type of man to show his rage—you understood that, even empathised, but it did nothing to rest the uneasy anxiety that seemed to squeeze your heart. 

“You know my mother?” 

You supposed he could probably hear the desperation behind your voice, but you were too confused to care. 

“In a way, yes. You could say in another life.” 

These words, too, were less than kind. In whatever way he and Cordelia had crossed, it had not ended well—and here he was, with her poor, defenseless daughter. You wondered, again, whether he had ulterior motives layed out for you, based on the information you had so willingly supplied and the matter of your family. 

“She’s dying.” 

“I don’t see why that’s my problem.” 

He was toying with you. Gauging your reactions—it was clear, now, that perhaps he had let you see the rage lurking beneath the surface, when merely it had been orchestrated. Though his lips were pursed, you could hear the smile deep in the graceful sound of his voice. 

“So you can’t help her?” 

“For a price, maybe. You see, I’ve been stuck in the dark for a long time, thanks to your mother and your Coven. I don’t see the fairness in having everything taken from me, without, in return, a loss on your side. They do love you, correct?” 

Your nod was fervent. In some way, you knew what he was about to ask of you, and yet you had no doubts in your mind. What good did hesitation or fear do? How would that stop your mother's death? 

“A soul. _ Your soul.  _ That’s the price.” 

“Done.” 

From the surprise in his eyes, you knew, regardless of however he had thought he had read you like a book, he had not expected your quick reply. You supposed not many would willingly sign their life away, even if so much was in the balance. If your previous goal had been to save your mother, your new one would be to make sure he would never get into your head. 

_ Can you tell me the truth now?  _

With an effortless flick of his fingers, you found yourself relinquished from the invisible hold that had paralysed you. As you leant up to steady yourself, he reached out a hand—you noted the rings that decorated it, ornate and obviously expensive. Slowly, you extended your own, trying not to relish in how the only heat in the cold room was coming from  _ him.  _

His touch was as gentle as it had been when he was merely a shadow; even with you in his possession, he still wanted to treat you like a fragile bird. The actions he had taken to you, both the tenderness and the mind games, did little to ease your efforts to figure out your situation. 

Did he want you to feel scared? Should you? Maybe your body had forgotten it’s survival instincts in his presence—or maybe it had just let go of whatever selfishness usually drove it. Perhaps that was what he had wanted and aimed for: your unwavering compliance, of which you had so eagerly given. 

The cool metal of his jewellery made you shiver. Out of the corner of your eye, you thought you saw him frown, a somewhat boyish expression that disappeared before you could fully register.

In the time that it took you to blink, you were no longer stuck in the nightmarish version of a memory, nor were you in anywhere that you recognised. The drastic change to sunlight— sunlight that kissed your skin— and the hazy smell of lavender and roses was something you could appreciate, even in the unknown. 

If this was hell, it didn’t fit the biblical description. 

Michael let go of your hand, facing you again with those piercing eyes. He didn’t seem triumphant or pleased—yet he was not angry either. Quite simply, he took you in, ignoring your evident joy at the surrounding nature. When you faced him, it was hard, again, to conjure up the effort to speak. 

Looking up at him with wide eyes, it was hard not to feel small. Though you were sure you were the Supreme, the supposed personification of magic, he was something else. There was light to feed off everywhere in this realm—apart from him. 

Taking you in, it seemed he finally remembered the answer he owed you. 

“Your mother, in the old life and this one, knew you had no place in the world of evil—she battled the son of satan, and though she thought she won, it seems she’s lost you, the only worthwhile thing in her new life.” 

Breathing in the fresh air of wherever he had taken you, it was, surprisingly, an easier feat to feel fear than minutes ago in the darkness. Michael Langdon stood out against the beauty, though he was beautiful in his own very unique right—but innocence was the only word that you couldn’t ever place to him. 

You had landed yourself at the throne of the Antichrist himself, and you had done it willingly. If you were less of a truthful person, you would have pleaded manipulation—yet you had known perfectly well what you had done. Whether it was in the name of love and family or foolishness, there was no way to reverse it. 

The panic that you had managed to evade before decided to make an appearance...it seemed he noticed. His look towards you seemed one of almost pity, and you didn’t want to imagine why you looked like before him—a coward, or maybe just a human, inevitably regretting your choices. 

“If you could have remembered who I am, Y/N, you would’ve remembered not to trust me.” 

Before you succumbed to the stress, a moment of clarity rested over you. The words you uttered, as well as his own, seemed to resonate around and around in your head, the last thing you could think of before the darkness closed in and you hit the floor. 

“I don’t.” 


End file.
